Germans kept up at night by noisy igelsex (that's hedgehog coupling)

[Botany]

Police called out to reports of nocturnal disturbances find hedgehogs ‘having fun’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/05/germans-kept-up-at-night-by-noisy-igelsex-thats-hedgehog-coupling


German emergency services called out to attend to nighttime disturbances are increasingly finding themselves confronted with copulating hedgehogs.

People are calling 110 (the German emergency number) to complain about noises they typically put down to neighbours having unacceptably loud sex or to injured animals crying out for help. The spread of the hashtag #igelsex (hedgehog sex) on social media reveals the disturbances sometimes have a less predictable source.

Recently police in Augsburg were called to a primary school one night after suspicious noises were heard in the playground and a security light was activated. Only after the caretaker had been dragged out of bed and several police officers had inspected the site were the culprits found to be a pair of hedgehogs busily mating.

“The suspicious noises were soon pinned on a hedgehog couple in the midst of a mating ritual,” a superintendent wrote in his report, entitled “Prickly intruders”, adding that the hedgehogs were not disturbed.

The incident was not an isolated one. Police are frequently called out in the summer months to similar complaints, according to the news magazine Der Spiegel. It reports that hedgehogs are among the loudest nocturnal animals, competing with cicadas, frogs and the caridean snapping shrimp.

[MineralMan]

1. What a cutie!

I want those living in my backyard.

In Europe, people build little shelters for hedgehogs in their gardens to attract them to live in their yards. Here in Minnesota, all we get in our yards are opossums and groundhogs. While they'e OK in their own way, I want an igel in my yard. Just remember, stroke igels with the direction of their spines, not against it. Prickly litttle buggers...

[Bettie]

2. I probably shouldn't laugh

but I am.

I'd be able to get sleep, even if it was loud, after I knew what it was. Then again, I live a block from very busy train tracks.